Hospitals and projects related to healthcare must follow specific guidelines based on the rules and regulations of their country. These standards help us to design complex spaces, such as those located in areas of surgery, hospitalization, diagnostics, laboratories, and including areas and circulations that are clean, dirty, restricted or public, which create a properly functioning building.
There are a few spaces that we, as architects, can develop with great ease and freedom of design: waiting rooms, reception areas, and outdoor spaces. These are spaces where architects can express the character of the hospital. To jump-start you into this process, we have selected 43 projects that show us how creativity and quality of a space go hand-in-hand with functionality.
Rooms
Dental Clinic - Gaia / atelierdacosta
"The use of glass -”this insulator, this miracle of a stopped fluid”, “this colorless, odorless, non-degradable”( Baudrillard, 1969), “moral and hygienic” (Teyssot, 2010) material, - was turned into a project constraint for very prosaic reasons – and its ends are rounded, making the very common transit of medical trolleys, wheelchairs and so one, smoother and easier"
NYDG Integral Health & Wellness / Brandon Haw Architecture
"Within the treatment rooms, solid ground quartz flooring creates an easily maintained seamless surface essential for procedural spaces. The ceilings are defined by a simple, evenly lit panel that can be dimmed to a comfortable level upon entering or to a brighter level when any procedure is in progress; this light is augmented by specific task lighting integrated into the ceiling zone"
Bota Bota / Sid Lee Architecture
"In addition to the wide range of treatments offered, the Bota Bota experience immerses visitors in an environment that plays host to both light and dark. The Sid Lee Architecture team set out to create an indoor space conducive to introspection and an outdoor space affording spectacular views of the city, from the upper decks. Visitors forget they’re on a boat as they transition through the five different levels, discovering the city from each one"
The Walk-in Camera Obscura at Fürstenfeld Regional Hospital / balloon architekten ZT-OG
"In terms of how it works, the camera obscura as the prototype of the photographic camera is much like the human eye, that depicts images upside down on the retina. Distinctive features in the surroundings are photographed and projected in real time through a hole in the wall, upside down and along with all changes due to incidence of light, time of day and year, onto a screen in the darkened room inside the camera obscura. Hence, this also works without the need for any electrotechnical installations such as a film camera. With the aid of lenses and angled mirrors, the projection of the outside world can be brought into focus and redirected onto the floor, the walls or ceiling of the interior"
Dentist Charlotte Mestdagh / Declerck-Daels Architecten
"The architects focused on the atmosphere and comfort of both patient and dentist through different entities. There’s an abundance of light throughout the whole practice. Patients are distracted by the clouds and the birds that can be seen through the skylights above the dental chairs"
Univers Nuface / Adhoc Architectes
"ADHOC's strategy was to create a clean and luminous space which would link the different parts together through colors, textures and materials. The resulting look is one of unity and coherence that allows for each zone's specificity to stand out. Easy and low-cost methods such as the creative use of contrasting paint colors were used to create different atmospheres within the consultation rooms without adding walls. Furthermore, the use of digital parametric tools allowed our team to create from a microscopic texture of a butterfly's wing a motif reinterpreted in the clinic's different zones"
Clinic NK / 1-1 Architects
Azala / Gardera-D Architecture + Atelier Philippe Pastre
"The meaning of the project lies in the different means used to deform the typical surrounding landscape, tending towards a more poetic, a more singular dimension, in relation with the architectural project and the characteristics of each of the external spaces around it"
Navyas / Cadence Architects
"The jali screen would enable us to cut down the harsh sound from the street traffic and the general humdrum of the city. It would also cut the harsh light that would infiltrate the interiors. The traditional Jali was re-imagined in a contemporary pattern to form a light ephemeral veil for the interiors. We infused life into this jali by juxtaposing it with a layer of curated medicinal plants. The plants protected by the jali not only help in therapeutic purposes but also help create a soft ambience in the interior. The jali was constructed out of ferro-concrete to enable the complex pattern desired"
B+L HQ / 137kilo Architekci
Retirement and Nursing Home Wilder Kaiser / SRAP Sedlak Rissland + Dürschinger Architekten
"The apartments are equipped properly and designed in a modern way. Bathrooms have transom light strips. There are niches offering seating benches at the entrances to the apartments. Little community spaces are situated all over a care group with cantelivering, roofed terraces and balconies, orientated to the Mountain Range and the picturesque Village Centre of Scheffau"
Dra. Campoy Dental Clinic / Jaime Sepulcre Bernad
Care Lab / dmvA architects
"The care home, the heart of Care lab, simulates a cozy residential home but is still abstract. Instead of using closed walls, the care home is surrounded by an open closet system. That way Care lab becomes open and accessible"
Waiting Rooms
Clinic NK / 1-1 Architects
Medical Practice De Schuyter / Joshua Florquin Architects
"The different benches are separated by armrest-libraries creating small waiting islands. When a patient visits the practice, according to his mental and physical state, he can choose to sit with other patients or search privacy and sit alone in one of the islands. The facing benches are not parallel but have a skewed zigzagged form in order to naturally avoid a direct eye-contact, if wished"
Haspali Spa / Three.Ball.Cascade.Architects
Caboolture GP Super Clinic / Wilson Architects
“From a patient’s perspective, it’s revitalising and refreshing – because of the fact that you’re surrounded by nature and life”
IN.DENT / AN.ONYMOUS
A Warm Clinic / RIGI Design
"The orange and transparent area on the left side of the waiting area is the central supply room of the clinic. All medical devices and gauze will be centralized and sterilized here; thus the philosophy of “going transparent” of the clinic will be reflected through this transparent and open way. All these designs make people have a further perception of the clinic’s philosophy, while life scenario oriented design further expresses the clinic’s warm and caring nature"
Residential Care Home Andritz / Dietger Wissounig Architekten
"Shorter and longer walks around the building with varying visual references and pleasant quiet zones ensure diverse free movement opportunities, even outside set therapy sessions"
Sayanomoto Clinic / Yamazaki Kentaro Design Workshop
"In this clinic, however, a special "Learning" common space was created intended for patients living with dementia and their families. This "Learning" space is not meant to directly treat the illness but rather to provide visitors with a starting point for facing the condition of dementia"
Maggie's Cancer Centre Manchester / Foster + Partners
"Institutional references, such as corridors and hospital signs have been banished in favour of home-like spaces. To that end the materials palette combines warm, natural wood and tactile surfaces. Staff will be unobtrusive, yet close and accessible. Support offices are placed on a mezzanine level positioned on top of a wide central spine, with toilets and storage spaces below, maintaining natural visual connections across the building"
Dental Clinic in Porto / Ren Pepe Arquitetos
Hirano Clinic / TSC Architects
"The shape that a wall assists makes a feeling of opening without giving the town a feeling of pressure and makes the memory of the town. In addition, the diagonal adjoining roof supports a building and the connection with the town. The house-shaped window of various size penetrated by the wall is each domestic symbol and watches local people warmly. We prepared the space with the warmth into the finish of the interior decoration using a variety of trees. We pray for becoming the place of the community of the people whom this building visits"
Farmhouse in Westerlo / Van Staeyen + Beutels/Apers
Atriums and Courtyards
Santa Fe de Bogotá Foundation / El Equipo de Mazzanti
"The façade uses the brick in extension and not in compression as we are used to. It uses metallic parts and cables that support the brick as a fabric. This allows us to have different patterns and textures giving the opportunity to have several natural lighting uses depending on the needs. That is why we can have more natural lighting which helps the patient’s recovery"
Santa Rita Geriatric Center / Manuel Ocaña
"A geriatric center that does not look like a hospital can be built, without corridors, without architectural barriers, on one floor. In which all rooms have direct access to and from a large garden-lobby. In addition to direct access to and from the common areas"
General Hospital of Niger / CADI
"In the hot and dry environment, building shading has significant influence on the indoor temperature. In order to avoid direct sunlight, a number of external sun-shade components are designed. The gaps between the shading panels and the walls form air microcirculation around the windows, which is conducive to carry off the surrounding heat. The architectural technology of this sunshade system has high durability with in-situ concreting"
Rey Juan Carlos Hospital / Rafael de La-Hoz
"This new hospital model is configured in three basic elements: efficiency, light and silence. The best about hospital architecture and the best in residential architecture"
Sangdong Charcoal Village / studio_suspicion
Retirement and Nursing Home Wilder Kaiser / SRAP Sedlak Rissland + Dürschinger Architekten
"The central and green atrium brings zenithal skylight inside the building. Furthermore, it enables a visual communication accross floors, between the dining areas and communal areas of the different care units. These Units are spread over the two upper levels with a total of 54 apartments"
Bundang Seoul National University Hospital / JUNGLIM Architecture
Allen Institute / Perkins+Will
"The design orients labs like flower petals around a large light-filled central atrium; the effect is like the inside of a bee hive where researchers can see each other and what they are doing, making the space more collaborative, flexible, and transparent"
Lausanne University Hospital Extension / meier + associés architectes
Reception Areas
‘De poort van Borne’ Healthcare Center / Reitsema & partners architecten
Psychopedagogical Medical Center / Comas-Pont arquitectos
"A system of economic and energetically sustainable constructions, plus the domestic scale and the warmth of the interior spaces added to the relationship between building and nature, makes this a HEALTHY BUILDING"
Dent Protetyka / Adam Wiercinski Architekt
Youth Mental Health Building, Brain and Mind Research Institute / BVN Architecture
"This building was designed to take into account many diverse requirements and constraints, it had to provide a human scaled and tactile environment for mental health patients on one hand and address an inner-city streetscape that combines residences and the remnants of the industrial character of Camperdown on the other"
Dental Clinic / NAN Arquitectos
B+L HQ / 137kilo Architekci
"An open-space arrangement was used for many of the workspaces. The open space is punctuated with meeting room domes which also delineate the office’s various departments. The domes are meant for less formal work meetings. Their high-tech inflatable surfaces invoke the client’s main product – contact lenses. The domes’ internal steel structure provides rigidity and adherence to fire codes"
Uniprix Pharmacy and Medical Center / Jean de Lessard Designers Créatifs
Dental Angels / YLAB Arquitectos
"The spaces had to be wide and bright and the ambience warm and comfortable (...) Light colors, curved shapes and the indirect lighting which goes through all the areas, convey the sensation of calm and balance both for patients and medical staff"
A+animal hospital / jhy architect & associates
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